Michael A. De Leon is a graphic designer by day, but wears many hats in his off time. In 2004, after several years of covering the Spurs, he started Project Spurs, a Spurs team fansite as an outlet to provide content to Spurs fans, while continuing to write for himself and learning the ins and outs of online publishing and web design. He has since built a writing team and started a popular weekly Spurs podcast called the Spurscast.

Note: This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

A look at Texas’ Damion James

Though he has not participated in any pre-draft workouts for the San Antonio Spurs, there is quite a bit of Internet chatter about the possibility of Texas Longhorn star forward Damion James becoming a Spur on Thursday.

20. San Antonio. Damion James, SF, Texas. The Spurs would like to move up to get a solid wing player like Paul George or Xavier Henry but, failing that, James would help fill their small-forward need.

For those of you that don’t bleed burnt orange, James has been a four year starter for The University of Texas at Austin. He is 6’7″ 225 lbs. with an athletic, muscular frame. Though he was a very successful small to power-forward for the Longhorns, he will be a little undersized in the NBA and doesn’t come in with a real position niche. That being said, James has made a real statement at Texas and was a genuine leader on a very good basketball team.

He has also left his mark for posterity, becoming the Big XII all-time leader in rebounding in 2010. A conference with the nation’s highest RPI last season. Not an easy feat. Last season he averaged a double-double for Texas with 18 points and 10.3 rebounds per game. In his four years for the Longhorns he has never averaged less than 25 minutes per game, so he is battle tested and has proven consistency. He has even showed a lot of success from the three-point line, shooting over 38% in the 2009-2010 season. He was the guy you want to have the ball with the game on the line if you were a Longhorn fan.

Offensively, James showed great variety in how he was capable of scoring in the scrimmages, looking very comfortable operating in isolation situations, which were heavily featured for all players. Not the best advanced ball-handler in the world, James showed a very good grasp of ball fakes and jab steps, and with his excellent length (7’1 wingspan), he has little trouble getting separation for his shot when pulling up.

James also showed some nice flashes when attacking the basket, doing a good job of finishing through contact at the rim. He doesn’t have the greatest first step, but his size, length, and strength allow him to create good shot opportunities even when he can’t get past his man’s hip

As someone who has seen James play in person on many occasions, I can tell you he is a difficult player to evaluate outside of game situations. This is where he excels. His on the court personality is very reminiscent of Spurs’ guard ManuGinobili in that he is the kind of individual who constantly competes and makes the big plays which often don’t show up in the stat-sheet.